Living a Dog's Life

Early in her new book, Australian author Kate Jennings describes her new puppy not as a "small brown dog," but as a "tense bundle of muscle and sinew that stood seventeen inches high." Not exactly the gushy tone you might read in other dog books, but "Stanley and Sophie" sacrifices sweetness for some harsh realities: losing a husband, living in post-9/11 New York and adopting two dogs in hopes of companionship. Jennings learned to love the pair, so when it came time for her third book, Jennings turned to what she new best—her two border terriers. To be fair, it took some imagination to get into a dog's mindset: "For one, I don't do handstands when I pee" she told NEWSWEEK's Kurt Soller before delving into what makes dog literature an art form; how one should take care of monkeys; and why so many New Yorkers squeeze pets into their miniscule apartments. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK : You've previously written novels, so how did you decide to write a memoir—no less, one about your dogs?
Kate Jennings: I write to explain things to myself, so I wanted to try to explain to myself why I had come to love these dogs. Given that I grew up as a really pragmatic farm girl with a yard dog, a sheepdog, I was curious why I really fell for these two. And I wanted to write about New York.

What about the city?
By writing this book, it would be my break after September 11. After the terrorist attack, life in New York really changed. In those years, we went from worrying about private lives to worrying about politics all the time. It's been an amazing eight years and I wanted to get at those emotions—they're always under the surface [especially since the attack] will probably happen in New York again.

So you then chose to express those thoughts by writing about the dogs.
Well, when I started writing this book, my agent and people in the publishing world said, "Dog books don't sell." And then "Marley and Me" came along. But it's not a straight-up dog companion book—it's my dog-monkey-and-state-of-the-world book. There's not a shelf in the bookstore for that; it's a problem, marketingwise.

"Stanley and Sophie" takes a different tack than the other dog books. This is a spoiler for our readers, but what were you going through when you decided to give away Stanley and Sophie to separate sets of owners?
That was a huge decision. In life, we mostly do things that make us happy. And in these cases, I had to broaden their lives at the cost of my own emotions. It was horrible. But thankfully, I'm still their grandmother. All that terrier energy is now spread about two sets of parents. I didn't realize it was going to work out as well as it did, and the [other owners] have become terrific friends.

The number of dogs in New York always surprises me. What do you think draws New Yorkers to put pets in their small apartments?
I think it's because of vertical living. Dogs are a way for New Yorkers to interact with their neighbors in a way that they couldn't otherwise. You can't always just stop and say hello to a stranger, and the city can be very lonely. But big dogs, Afghan hounds kept in a studio apartment, that's just crazy. And plus, dogs aren't pets.